Wow, if you close your eyes, you can actually hear the money talking.

It may just be possible that the mainstream of common thought is a bit tetchy . After all it is a very small number people who actually wish to equate irrational fear mongering themes into the discussion .
Irrational aside from their desire to have the rest of us jump off a bridge into the pre Magna Carta politics of kings . That is pretty rational .

Could Dr Dean place Ezra Klein on one knee with Kevin Drum upon his other knee and explain to them the difference between reforming health care and reforming health care insurance. Or, just turn them over and give them a good spanking.

It is welcome to hear progressives, OK the "left," actually named as a pseudo-caucus. I'm sure Waxman wants to be part of that group.

Anything that blunts Baucus and the Senate conservatives will be helpful. That's where the stymie hits the wall.

It just feels exactly like a law against negotiating the price of drugs . A heavy nutty flavour with a long bitter aftertaste , for your pleasure .

As to that law negating the negotiating of drugs in the Medicare Bill, just who was that Masked Man from Helena the RepuGs allowed to sit in on the formulation of that bill and place his rubber stamp upon that pile of swill? Can still hear him braying "Hi-Yo Bi-partisanSilver" as his trusty sidekick, Tonto, kept the Ka-Ching Ka-Ching counter working at his coffers.

"blunt Max Baucus and the Senate conservatives"

But, would they even know the cigarettes were laced with grass?

[trolling deleted. "Democrat Party" tips your hand and gets you disappeared into the ether. --Mod]

The Democrat Party

Yes, tehee, the Republi Party is in the can.

Compromise where people's health and welfare is concerned is unconscionable. Sometimes taking a stance is the only ethical choice.

I find it insulting that politicians who are covered by the best medical plan in the world think they know what is best for us. How many of them (yes, you too Mister Obama, after all its not about you....very insulting by the way) will give up their Federal Health Care to join the general public's health care, how many??

On top of that our taxes will go up. There will be no more pre-tax deduction for those of us who choose to work and have medical coverage. Now we will have one less tax-deduction, can't wait to see where those tax dollars go.

The Republican Politico.com might be troll-baiting and trying to pick a fight between the Blue Dogs and the Progressives.

Along with Cohn and Klein, Brian Beutler at TPM is also reporting compromise, so far, seems relatively palatable.

The "public option" appears intact.

Over the past several days EK and KD have been doing a little tap dance about how what's emerging would provide coverage for 11 million Americans, "and that's the important point".

But when we started, demanding a single-payer universal coverage solution, the public option was the important point.

What's emerging is an open-ended subsidy for the insurance industry with one hand, and a cover story for them with the other. Requiring them to provide insurance for all at the same rate will let them claim that reform is forcing them to raise their rates, which they will do with dizzying speed to rake in new subsidies.

Add in some means testing and deductibles and the people who need health insurance end up with nothing in terms of access. So-called 'catastrophic insurance' is insurance for the people you owe money to, not for you.

If America's banks, mortgage companies, car dealers, and hospitals need insurance against the costs of health care, do it. But don't call it reform.

I think the relevant compromise should be: they don't HAVE to use Medicare rates.

Okay, now let me say this: Everyone, including the big insurers, uses a percentage of Medicare rates as reimbursement. The issue is what percentage. Giving a set percentage basically cuts out a lot of potential negotiation. The AMA also likes it.

The Dems just had a big confab Monday afternoon to go over the bill. What was the result of that?

That much maligned Lewin Group study goes over the different results from who gets into the exchange and what reimbursement rates the public option uses as to its effect on policy prices. You didn't really think the Republicans were telling you the truth about what that study says, did you? They were counting on no one actually reading it.

Just before the former Insurance Commissioner of North Dakota, now turned Democratic Representative and part of the Blue Dog Coalition went on C-Span, this morning, to explain that he is not on the take, there was a caller from San Antonio who claimed the VA system proves why government run health care is bad. He said he had to wait for six months to be seen. Unfortunately, there has been a six month wait to be assigned a Primary Care Physician, as the VA has been underfunded. If you do not have a PCP, then you cannot use the Pharmaceutical section. However, during the wait, you can use any VA ER and, if medications are prescribed, then the VA will allow you to receive those medications. But, the huge difference between the VA's ER system and ERs of private hospitals is the billing. The VA will not lien your personal property and, should you be in lower incomes, you will not be billed. Once, you have a PCP, any "Six Month Wait" is a canard. Yeah, caller, it is really a "terrible" system.

I renew my call to have the Mexican Drug Lords provide us with healthcare.

After all, they know how to get things done.

A heavy nutty flavour with a long bitter aftertaste , for your pleasure. -FRP

Mmmmm...tastes like tanning beds.

Requiring them to provide insurance for all at the same rate will let them claim that reform is forcing them to raise their rates, which they will do with dizzying speed to rake in new subsidies.

Why do people assume that Waxman and his staff are total doofuses who wouldn't put in measures to protect against this? Sec 116 of HR3200 makes the kind of premium gaming people are fearing somewhere between very difficult and illegal. Don't buy into the meme originating from the Right that this is just a huge bill slapped together. If you read it you will see that it is pretty carefully crafted in ways that hedge in private providers, it is not a case of throwing 47 million uninsured into the PHI lions' den.

Henry Waxman doesn't hate you.

HR3200 http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2009/07/hr3200-sec-116-golden-bullet-or-smoking.html

Maybe it's time for Obama, Reid and Pelosi to withdraw all healthcare legislation and for Obama to start running against every Republican and Blue Dog "dimocrap" on the issue - let the people decide who they want to have really doing something about the issue. Make 2010 a truly defining moment.

Uh, yeah...the VA is a truly terrible system. I retired in 2005 after 24 yrs on active duty and VA care is a disaster. The hospitals are crowded (in some cases not even enough chairs in waiting rooms), waits are interminable, and you never see the same doctor twice (unless it's a specialist, and even then there's no guarantee).

And I'm fed up with whines that the VA is underfunded. So is Medicare ($30 Trillion in unfunded liabilities in the outyears). The fundamental problem is that the VA is unionized civil servants with guaranteed lifetime employment.

"The fundamental problem is that the VA is unionized civil servants with guaranteed lifetime employment."

The most basic definition of "ideological" is pulling something out of your ass and holding it up as causation without as much as a shred of evidence to support such a claim, i.e. what you just wrote.

Did you ever think that perhaps the VA is just, you know, underfunded ? I mean, we are still in the middle of one war and just winding down one that lasted longer than WWII. A logical person might assume that this is stressing the VA system just a bit more than normal.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IraqCoverage/story?id=2678859&page=1

http://www.fundtheva.com/

The French health care system is frequently cited as the best, or one of the best in the world. It is supported by both public financing, with high taxes levied on employees and employers alike, as well as by private supplemental insurance. It is the third most expensive system in the world and suffers from a perrennial deficit that each year requires politicians to find a new source of revenue to support.

The French system, as critics have noted about the perceived benefits of one-payer systems, fails for the most part to introduce new home-grown drugs, technologies or approaches, which are mostly developed in the USA.

It seems most here, and most who support the current plans being considered by Congress, believe there is a magic or utopian solution to a complex problem. No matter what we do, or don't do, about health care, there will be unintended consequences. To believe that the yahoos in Congress who have never managed anything in their lives and have no direct knowledge or experience with the health care system, can somehow successfully rejigger one-sixth of the economy is dreamy-eyed, brainless nonesense.

As a physician who has worked at multiple sites including the VA, I can say I have never seen lazier crappier employees than the VA. The facilities are run down. The CT and MRI scanners go offline for routine maintenance in the middle of the day because of union mandates. VAs that are staffed by university hospitals have excellent physicians, the rest are backwaters where you often don't even have to maintain board certification. The only good thing about the VA are the patients.